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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sowbug who wrote (38268)	3/7/1998 4:18:00 PM
From: Gary Korn	Respond to of 61433

3/9/98 Computer Retail Wk. 03 1998 WL 2374775 Computer Retail Week Copyright 1998 CMP Publications Inc. Monday, March 9, 1998 200 News ISPs Slow to Adopt New V.90 Standard -- Large-scale deployment will take months Todd Wasserman Waltham, Mass. - Consumers who buy V.90 modems may be able to find a working V.90 Internet connection as soon as mid-April, but large-scale deployment by Internet Service Providers is likely to take a few months, analysts said. 3Com is planning to ship V.90 software to ISPs by the end of March, said 3Com project manager Bill Baty. The company released a dual-mode x2/V.90 modem to the channel last month. "I can't really speak for how ISPs are going to roll it out," he said, "but they're really clamoring for this code." According to BoardWatch Magazine, Littleton, Colo., about 1,100 North American ISPs currently use x2. About 1,400 ISPs use technology based on K56flex, a 56K-bps modem protocol developed by Rockwell Semiconductor Systems and Lucent Technologies. Another 350 or so offer both x2 and K56flex. The rest of the 4,470 ISPs did not upgrade to any form of 56K technology. Will Strauss, an analyst for Forward Concepts, Tempe, Ariz., said it will take a few months before most ISPs offer V.90. "The V.90 upgrades won't make up more than 50 percent until the third quarter [of 1998]," Strauss said. Lisa Pelgrim, an analyst for Dataquest, San Jose, Calif., estimated most ISPs will offer V.90 by midyear, but said such deployment is hard to predict. Rockwell began shipping its V.90 code to ISPs on Feb. 9, three days after the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced the release of the V.90 standard draft for 56K-bps modems. Though Rockwell beat 3Com by shipping its V.90 ISP code faster, it used a less-direct path. Rockwell didn't ship directly to ISPs, sending the software instead to networking companies Ascend Communications, Shiva and Cisco Systems. Steve McIntyre, product manager for Rockwell's client-side modem group, said those companies are beta-testing Rockwell's V.90 software. "It's basically in a testing phase at this point," he said. "When they have confidence in what we've released, they will release it to the ISPs." Once these companies complete beta testing, there will be a new round of V.90 testing with the ISPs' equipment. McIntyre said that testing might begin in May, but declined to make a prediction. At press time, few ISPs had targeted V.90 release dates. Lucent Technologies, meanwhile, is planning to release its V.90 code this month. Martin Rauchwerk, Lucent's director of modem marketing, said three to six months will pass before V.90 is rolled out to most ISPs. Word Count: 399 3/9/98 COMRETWK 03 END OF DOCUMENT